Houston Personal Injury Lawyers

Searching for Houston Personal Injury Lawyers? Our Houston Injury Attorneys Can Help

You likely have the right to file a personal injury claim if you have been injured in any way through the negligence of another individual or entity. A personal injury lawsuit enables victims injured in this way to recover financial compensation for the losses associated with the injuries, including medical bills, lost wages and pain and suffering, and potentially other forms.

However, personal injury lawsuits are extremely challenging to win and it is best to have an experienced attorney handle the process. In addition, defense attorneys can be ruthless in defending their clients and a non-attorney has little chance of standing against them. Grossman Law Offices has 20 years of experience prevailing in these cases and we are ready to help you if you or a loved one has been injured.

What Constitutes a Personal Injury?

The law considers a personal injury any physical, emotional or mental injury brought about by another party’s negligence. In Texas, personal injuries typically take place in motor vehicle accidents, or on the job. But a personal injury can happen in Texas anywhere, in any way. A personal injury law suit allows victims to seek damages (compensation) from the liable party or parties for their injuries. However, compensation does not come automatically just because a victim has suffered injuries. Rather, they must make the responsible party legally obligated to award them damages through filing a personal injury law suit. It may seem like a person with injuries should automatically be granted fair compensation, but that is not the way it works in reality. In addition, a plaintiff’s attorneys must establish that the defendant’s negligence was either a direct or proximate cause of the injuries.

How Can I Know If I Have a Case?

You may have a personal injury lawsuit if another individual violated a legal duty they had to you and caused you injury as a result. For example, a negligent driver may cause an accident and an injury to another individual, in which case legally speaking they would have “violated their duty of public safety” toward the injured party.

Therefore, to prove a personal injury case, Houston personal injury lawyers must prove both that the defendant had a legal duty toward the injured party and that they violated that duty. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff. With such a critical and challenging job, it is best to engage an experienced attorney such as Houston personal injury attorney Michael Grossman. Establishing that a legal duty existed can prove complicated as the type of duty owed changes based on the details of the incident, as well as the relationship of the parties to each other. For instance, if a doctor were to cut you outside of a medical context, he would have violated a legal duty to you, but if he cuts you within the context of performing surgery, it is acceptable. Different circumstances mean different legal duties are owed. Determining what legal duties are owed and if they have been violated in most cases requires the skill and judgment of an experienced attorney such as Houston personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman.

The details of the type of accident that occurred can further complicate matters. For instance, when a Houston construction worker is injured on the job, the employer may be liable for not providing a safe work environment for them. In a slightly different circumstance, if a construction worker is working as a contractor rather than a full-time employee, they are responsible for their own safety while on the site, meaning the employer may likely have no liability for injuries incurred. Having an experienced attorney analyze your case to provide certainty on these questions is paramount in securing the compensation you deserve for your injuries.

Three Criteria for Personal Injury Cases

To have a successful personal injury case, it must meet criteria in three areas: liability, damages and solvency. Without even one of these elements, the case will not stand – much like a three-legged stool.

Negligence Types and Liability in Houston Personal Injury Cases

An individual is said to be liable (at fault) if they violated a legal duty owed to the plaintiff, resulting in injury and financial loss. Often there is only one liable party, but there may well be multiple parties who had a hand in the accident. Most accident cases are a result of standard negligence, in which the defendant violated a legal duty through a momentary lapse of attention that led to an accident. For instance, the driver may have been texting or doing some other action that distracted them and caused a wreck.

Gross negligence is another way a legal duty can be breached. The type of negligence occurs when the party knowingly engages in an activity that would likely lead to an accident. Drunk driving is considered grossly negligent as the driver is fully aware of the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol. Other intentional acts cause injury. Other cases where harm is deliberately inflicted, such as assault with a deadly weapon, are considered intentional or deliberate tort, and violate a legal duty to the plaintiff as well. For a case to be successful, a skilled attorney such as Houston personal injury attorney Michael Grossman must establish that negligence occurred and that it led to your injury.

Estimating Damages

Damages must also have accrued to the victim due to their personal injury. In the legal world, damages does not mean the actual injuries; rather, it is the financial losses incurred from the injuries, e.g., medical expenses or lost wages. There are two types of damages a Houston personal injury victim may possibly sue for: general damages and special damages.

General damages involve physical conditions, disfigurement, loss of consortium, pain and suffering, emotional suffering, or several of the above. General damages tend to pose problems for plaintiffs as they are rather subjective in nature. Most often, an experienced Houston personal injury attorney is required to accurately assess a monetary value for the damages. Differing circumstances also add to the subjectivity of general damages. For example, a firefighter may rescue a child from a burning building, and they could both suffer the same severity of burns. However, one might argue that the child’s mental pain and suffering was worse than the adult’s, as they were aware beforehand of what they were about to do. A court may rule that the child should therefore receive more damages. Inexperienced attorneys often stumble at proving general damages, but Houston personal injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have 20 years of experience and have learned the best ways to justify the amount of damages our clients deserve.

Special Damages are tangible losses and thus easier to calculate and more objective. For instance, special damages may be acquired for court fees, medical bills both past and future, lost wages, property damage, or lost earning potential. Obtaining special damages is often high priority in a Houston personal injury case, as there are often bills from the injury that need to be paid immediately. Not all special damages are simple to calculate, however. It may appear that an injured person’s lost earning potential, for example, could be calculated by taking their current salary and multiplying it by the number of years they would have worked had they not been injured. But this formula does not include the raises or promotions the injured party may have received had they continued working their employment years. Houston personal injury attorney Michael Grossman is skilled in calculating the amount that will compensate you for the full extent of your lost earning potential.

Demonstrating Solvency

If the defendant has the financial means to pay damages should the verdict come out in favor of the plaintiff, they are said to be solvent. There will be no way for the plaintiff to collect damages if the victim is not solvent, as there will be no money to pay them. For instance, a homeless person cannot be sued as they have no assets that would enable them to pay for the victim’s injuries. Even if the homeless person is liable for the injuries they inflicted on the victim, there is simply no way for the homeless person to pay for them, and thus, no lawsuit may be filed.

The sad truth is that some dishonest defense attorneys can use this as a loophole to protect their clients. A defense attorney or client may attempt to hide their assets and present themselves as insolvent even though they truly have the means to pay the full damages. Houston personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman never takes the defendant’s word for it if they claim to be solvent. He thoroughly investigates their claim either through an asset check (which we perform on almost every defendant), or through various other means. We always ensure that the parties we go up against cannot hide their assets and that are clients receive compensation if in fact the defendant has the means to pay.

Have You Been Injured? Contact Houston Personal Injury Lawyer Michael Grossman

It is ill-advised to undertake your own personal injury case. Statistics are high that non-attorneys who attempt this either receive far less than they deserve, or more likely, nothing at all. We have heard these stories far too often in our own experience when people come to us for help after they have already lost their case irrevocably by attempting to represent themselves. Knowing some of the related laws is simply not enough to equip one for a personal injury lawsuit. Rather, they must know how to apply the laws.

A non-attorney also does not have the investigatory resources to provide the most important part of a personal injury case – proof. The reputation of the law firm you choose makes a big difference in your case. The Houston personal injury lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have built up a solid reputation over our two decades serving clients in their personal injury cases. Insurance companies know our track record of winning cases and are often willing to settle out of court when they hear that we are working on your case.

Houston personal injury attorney Michael Grossman is ready to help you pursue compensation in your personal injury case. Contact us at 1-855-392-0000 (toll free) for a free consultation so we can begin obtaining justice for you, so you can heal from your injuries without the stress of lacking financial means.